Mastering Real Estate with Effective Niche Marketing: Insights from a Veteran Realtor

00:00:12 - Mike Mills

Well, hello, good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to everybody out there or whenever you're tuning into this. And whether it be from the basket, the Internet, or the cozy corners of your office, this is the Texas Real Estate and finance podcast, and I am your host, Mike Mills, a local North Texas mortgage banker with Mike Mills Mortgage and Finance, and your guide on this real estate adventure, armed with nothing but a microphone and my wits, both of which are known to have technical difficulties from time to time, just like we have today. So with commission structures in real estate undergoing significant transformations, how, as a realtor, can you not just keep up, but truly stand out? And the secret lies in carving out your own unique value by finding and dominating your niche and then mastering the art of marketing to it. And today's episode highlights a Texas realtor who has figured out how to do just that, and not necessarily in a way that many others are trying. And she's going to tell us how and why she chose a little bit more unconventional marketing route. But as a reminder, if you get something out of today's discussion, show me a little love by liking, commenting, subscribing, or sharing today's episodes. It's a simple gesture that means the world to me and keeps me from attempting to teach my wife's cat about the importance of niche marketing. Plus, it helps spread some valuable knowledge to others in the world looking for a little light at the end of the tunnel in this crazy real estate market that we're dealing with. So today we have someone who turned the Fountain real estate market and its trends into her own personal marketing strategy. And she's leveraging an unusual form of social media to grow her business and reach her targeted client. So she's here to share a brain with us and all its innovation. So welcome Mike Mills Mortgage and Finance to the podcast. Daniellele, how are you doing?

00:01:47 - Danielle Fountain

I'm in. Fantastic. Except for actually, I'm a little hard right now because I look and I see that you're wearing a to the airport. I went to Mike Mills Mortgage and Finance, and we just played you in baseball, and we were up five to three going to the bottom of the 9th, and y'all hit a homer, tied it up extra innings, and we lost. So I love you, Mike, but it just got a little reminder of personal.

00:02:11 - Mike Mills

Little salt in the figured. I am. I grew up a Longhorn fan, but I went to Texas Tech, which is in Lubbock, obviously, and I live in north Texas, TCU and all that up. It's all. The only ones that I don't tolerate is a and M and ou other than that, I'm pretty open to whoever, but I figured I would wear my Fountain colors seeing that you're down there.

00:02:34 - Danielle Fountain

From Fountain, but I'll cheer for.

00:02:36 - Mike Mills

Yes. Yes. So before we kind of dive into some of the stuff about your marketing techniques and what you're doing these days, I would like to know a little bit about. I just want to start about how you go from the Air Force into real estate in Fountain. So how does that transition happen for you?

00:02:54 - Danielle Fountain

Well, so I was in for ten years, like I said, I went to Mike Mills Mortgage and Finance where we did electrical, aeronautical, all sorts of engineering. So a love numbers. At one point in time, I actually was a certified negotiator and mediator for the air force. Dealt a lot with labor unions, so not like hostage stuff. And I was stationed, my last base was in San Antonio. It was the Air Force personnel command, was working with a lot of generals for promotion boards. And I decided, you know what? I'm going to pull the rip cord and I'm going to get out, because I was kind of set for going and doing command deployments and everything. And I saw the writing on the wall. And at the end of the day, and I think it goes back to maybe a lot of agents, is I had a cap for my salary as a military member. It didn't matter how hard I worked. At the end of the day, I made what they were going to pay me, and that was it. And so I went out, was going to get into sales and petroleum. I ended up buying my first property. So, yes, I didn't buy a property until I was getting out. And it was an okay experience. And immediately, as you talk about different certifications in the military as far as streamlining and making your processes smoother and better, I immediately started doing that and was walking around a really good development side of East Fountain, constantly talking about real estate. And my then at the time girlfriend turned to me and said, now, wife, if you don't get your real estate license, you're going to have to find a new girlfriend because she was tired of it. So that night, signed up, jumped full force into it. And as a military veteran, and there's a lot of them out there that are agents, you come with a sense of, I say, organization and skill, but also like personal responsibility that I think sets you up.

00:04:35 - Mike Mills

This is a job where if you don't have self discipline and self motivation and are able to get yourself moving in the right direction on a regular basis, you're going to struggle with. So having that built into you already definitely gives you an advantage.

00:04:46 - Danielle Fountain

Yeah, definitely. And also the resiliency thing in general, in the military, you always have to be resilient. So there's nothing like being more resilient than when you have a seller or a buyer at the very end, cancel their deal and they're okay with losing their earnest money. Yes. There's some resiliency that you have to learn there.

00:05:04 - Mike Mills

Well, speaking of resiliency, because since it's all the rage these days, apparently and should be, and I did an episode about this on Monday, but I'm kind of getting everybody's take on it, so our entire industry is getting turned upside down. You're a realtor, obviously, I'm a mortgage banker, and we're all kind of in this ship together. But I'm curious for your opinion on what these commission changes have meant and what they are going to mean. Because right now it seems like we have some direction on what you can or can't do based on a few things, but there isn't a ton of direction on what's going to happen going forward, what you should do, how you should present yourself and present your commissions, all those kind of things. So I'm curious. You told me you just got out of a tom ferry meeting or seminar or whatever, so where's your head at with all this stuff?

00:05:59 - Danielle Fountain

My head is go and attack it. So he likens it to being a cow or being a bison. The bison is the one that gets through the storm fast because they go on and attack it. So it is immediately start talking. Don't wait till it comes out in June to when it's, hey, we got to have a buyer's agent agreement set up immediately or the commission discussion. It's, hi, you're talking to someone. You're calling someone a future, maybe a future buyer. Hey, I know that you're going to buy in a few months, and there's a lot of noise going on about what's going on with the NArs settlement and what it means for commission. Do you have a moment to sit down and we can kind of talk about what that means, what buyer agency means, how it kind of works out, and the different things that we're going to see. So if you can be proactive and you can reach out and start telling the story, you immediately are going to gain credibility with people. And that's phenomenal advice as far as attacking it and addressing the issue before it even becomes one. Because if you go into a meeting and you're on the defense, defense does not win games. At the end of the day, if you're going into a meeting and you're waiting for your client to bring it up, you're on the defense. If you come into the meeting and you're knowing, hey, this has just happened, you've probably seen it, let's discuss this. Let's figure out how this works. Now, there's a couple of things changing as far as they're not going to be able to list the commission in the MLS at the same time. They really hit on that. So if you're listening to this and you're an agent and you're thinking you're going to outsmart the system and you're going to create a separate portal to go in and write all the commissions out, that actually is exactly what they're trying to avoid because us as agents have always kind of kept our information and that's part of the issue of the whole lawsuit is we've kind of kept all this information behind closed doors. So the more transparent you are, which we'll get into, why I do that on Twitter, the more transparent you are, the better your business is going to be. So taking in advance, you're talking about the commission, they did come out and say that you can list your commission for each individual house. You can list it on your personal website because he said it's like a freedom of speech type thing that's going on. But as far as big brokerages and creating this massive list, you can't. And that's also where it goes back to really harnessing your skills as an agent when it comes to negotiations now, because you're going to start negotiating with your buyer before you ever show a house and then also having that negotiation go forward when it comes to purchasing the house. And so one of the thing I'll say is if you can convince your buyer that you're good at negotiating in that initial buyer's agent rep agreement and you've negotiated and they get in, they're like, if she can negotiate herself like this, I want her to negotiate on my house because I'm going to save x amount of dollars or she's going to negotiate the hell out of her commission. That's where you want it. You want it there, you want to start. It's almost like your first look, your first opportunity to impress your buyer is going to be there.

00:08:50 - Mike Mills

Yeah, I think it's where I kind of landed on it as far as the real change. Now, obviously, like you said, we can't put in listing agreement anymore. You can't even really put it in the listing description because there were some like, oh, we'll just put it, we can't do that really either. So obviously it can still be negotiated. The sellers can still pay it. There's no rules. The seller can't pay the buyer's agent commission. It just says it can't be offered. But where the challenge is going to come into play, which is what you addressed, is this is going to be the first time in a very, I mean, probably ever that a buyer's agent, when they first sit down, before they even show that first house, in most cases, they're going to have to have this conversation because in the past, you just, oh, yeah, sign the buyer's rep, agreement, no problem. We'll go see these houses and we'll go, well, now you're giving your time, right? Because you're going to take this person to show properties and you're also going to get a situation where, again, sellers could pay it, but they're going to be, especially if rates come down and the market starts to shift again, which is not too far off in the horizon, that's going to go away. And sellers aren't going to be willing to pay buyer commissions if they've got five or six offers on their house because we don't have enough inventory. But yeah, go ahead.

00:10:02 - Danielle Fountain

Well, with that being said, the other thing is that you can't put commission, but you can put a seller concession. So you can still have that, which is, I say, good in that aspect.

00:10:14 - Mike Mills

Well, you can, but again, it's going to go back to you because that seller concession, right? Yes. On any type of loan. So like with a conventional loan on a seller concession, you can't exceed 3% for somebody who puts down the minimum. So if the seller is like, hey, we're going to give you $5,000 and then you're explaining to your buyer, well, that's going to me, which again, not that it should or it shouldn't, but that's a conversation that has to be had. And that's going to be the biggest shift in my mind for buyer's agents going forward is that you're going to have to have these conversations. And the key to all of it is making sure that you can impart what your value is to the transaction, why you're important. And like you said, you can sell them and negotiate in that situation as to why you're important in the transaction and why they need you, then they're going to have an advocate on their side. Because the truth of this is, and this is really the sad part, and I hate that the national media has kind of taken this and run with it and is saying that, oh, this is great, realtors are overpaid and buyers and sellers are going to benefit from all this. No, the reality is that buyers are going to suffer from this because if they do not have representation in the long run and don't have someone advocating on their side, then they're going to be taken advantage of in the transaction because listing agents are still going to be there because sellers are still going to need agents to help them list their homes. And that method of operating isn't really changing. It's kind of staying the same for the most part. How much that is left to build still be discussed?

00:11:43 - Danielle Fountain

Yeah. And with that too, a couple of things that I learned from Todd Fairy is that you can't put on these buyer rep agreements. You can't put like a range. And so whatever your top is, whatever you put, yeah. So what? You can be paid less, but whatever you put as your top, you are not allowed to get more. So like, let's say you agree to two and a half percent. So this goes to the agents that think, oh, I'm going to lowball get them and then negotiate more. If on your buyer's rep agreement, it says that you're going to take one and a half percent, but you're hoping that you hit a 3%, not anymore. That remainder commission or whatever, even if it's a commission, it goes to the buyer and the buyer decides how it's handled. So just going and thinking, oh, well, that's great. I'll convince buyers to work with me, I'll do 1% and I'll later get that 3%. No, now you can go down from what you have on your contract, but you can't go up.

00:12:31 - Mike Mills

Did they say or did he know if they could give options? Because one way I thought was like, you could say, okay, if the seller pays it, it's going to be 1% or 2% or whatever. But if you have to pay it because the seller won't accept it, then it's going to be x. Can they do that?

00:12:45 - Danielle Fountain

He didn't get into that, but one of the main guys that's working with nar that was on his call today, said he has a meeting with them tomorrow. He's got 70 questions. So wouldn't be surprised if that's one of the questions because that was where I always thought is like, hey, this is where if you have to pay it, I have to pay it. The other thing, too that he also hit on is the zillow leads. Maybe people are out here. Zillow leads is where you get it, are these buyer leads. And now you're like, how do I have this discussion with them of, hey, they've got to sign a buyer's rep agreement. So going back to the bison, talking about the agency immediately. But it's also going to be like a lot of, I had someone explain to me, it's a crazy example, but it makes sense. It's like the best drug dealers, what do they do? They give you a little bit of the drug and then they get addicted. Yeah, kind of like a real estate agent. If you don't have them sign the agreement, show them one house, get them addicted to you, make them really appreciate you, then you do it. So instead it's going to be like, hey, this is it. I'm going to do a single showing agreement. Maybe it's a two day for a single property, and then you can expand on it. So it's going to be a little bit more paperwork, a little bit more legwork. But I think the good agents are really going to, it's going to cut out some of the nonsense and maybe it'll help our industry because maybe it will go back and we'll see a lot more professionals that stay in that are hungry. And it's not just the fly by seizure pants and go get your license to help your cousin.

00:14:07 - Mike Mills

Yeah. Well, I mean, in the interview I did on Monday, I think it was a great analogy that Amy used, which was basically, it's like accountants, right? Right. Now, if you're a standard W two employee that has a salary, et cetera, then you can go to H and R block and you can file your taxes and you pay a flat fee, and that's it. Or if you're a realtor or you're self employed, then you maybe need a CPA to do it. Or if you've got multiple companies, multiple properties, you might need a firm. And in those situations, the cost is going to be higher depending on what your needs and what your situation is. And I could very much see our market kind of heading in that direction to some extent. But I think there is true opportunity for agents that are professional and can adequately explain their value to their clients because once you explain it to them, they understand they will see the value. It's just that listing agents, I feel like, have always kind of had to do this to some extent. But the buyer agent just hasn't had to do that. And I think that, like you said, I think it's going to be a benefit to us in the long term, because overall, it's going to shrink the pool of folks out there that maybe they didn't deserve what they made.

00:15:19 - Danielle Fountain

I had a buyer say, a client that was telling me about previous to me meeting him, he bought a $1.2 million house. And what he set up is he paid the agent $500 an hour. So he had an hourly fee already. And this was like five years ago. He said, oh, I already did. And what he did is he found the house on his own. He loved the house, but he needed an agent, number one, to analyze it, to come with the market, come up with strategy as far as what to offer and to act it. And he said, look, it was a $1.2 million. They did 12 hours of work. I paid them $6,000. At the end of the day, we both walked away happy. I gave him referrals. And that's also the big thing. I think people have to look at the big picture. Don't focus in on that one commission. Focus in on that referral that you get that long term relationship. I think that's really going to be important.

00:16:07 - Mike Mills

Yes. It's not transactions. It's a career, and it's relationships, and that's the important part. Okay, well, all right, let's move past the commission stuff because it's dominating everything, but we don't know where it's going to go. We can only just speculate and just kind of keep navigating. So where we met was on do, obviously, I do the podcast. I post stuff on Instagram and Facebook and even TikTok to some extent. And I go on Twitter and I do post things on Twitter. But most of what I do personally is just, I'm making sure it's just kind of everywhere because I don't get know doing very specific videos very often on things like that. It just cuts from this. But I go on Twitter, and I use Twitter for news. I actually use Twitter quite a bit for the podcast because I come up with topics that I want to talk about. Lance Lambert, who's with Resi Club, who's a very big participant on there real estate Twitter, which we all participate, or X, I guess I keep calling, yeah, x, but that's weird. It's still weird to call it. So as I go through there, that's kind of where I get my newsfeed. But I don't really interact too much on there, because that's just kind of like where I get my news, and that's where I found you. And a lot of agents these days are going onto social media. They're using all these different platforms, but you really kind of took a unique route because there's not too many realtors that are really leveraging Twitter to grow their business. They're leveraging Facebook, Instagram especially. Everybody's on Instagram. And then a few of the other even, because anytime I talk to people, I go check out your different socials.

00:17:41 - Danielle Fountain

And look, I saw you found my private. Yeah, yeah.

00:17:45 - Mike Mills

So I'm just kind of checking everybody. You. You post a few things on there, here and there, but you're not what I would say, like, highly active on those, especially not compared to how active you are on Twitter.

00:17:54 - Danielle Fountain

And I used to be. And so that's actually the interesting thing is I used to be very active on Instagram, and at the beginning, it worked really well for me, but then the algorithms changed. And so when the algorithms changed, it shot me in the foot. And so that's one of the things I've been trying different things. And I also know when we start, I guess we're about to talk about it. But as far as defining the clientele that I want and what value I bring.

00:18:20 - Mike Mills

Okay. And this is something that we work with agents and stuff, we talk about a lot because we talk about marketing stuff, and I'm a big proponent of going where other people aren't. Right. So I talk about just these days, I talk about the mailbox a lot. Right. Because long time ago, you would get junk mail, you'd open it up, there'd be 50 pieces of mail in there, and it's just a nightmare. But nowadays, when I go check, there's some days I don't have any mail. So if you're putting stuff, if you're sending out mailers or you're sending out postcards or handwritten letters, that's actually pretty effective these days because there's not many people in the mailbox. Well, to your point, you're on Instagram. Well, every realtor on the planet is on Instagram. Right? You're just one amongst many. And I think most realtors are just advertising to each other. Most of the. Yeah.

00:19:05 - Danielle Fountain

And Instagram does that because they know, like, I used to when I first got on the platform, I loved it because I could search something, and then all the people that would pop up with their posts were, like, a single mom or the man that owns his own business, like, different things like that. Now it's like real estate agent, mortgage broker, title company. I don't want to see them.

00:19:24 - Mike Mills

Yes. No, because we craft our own little view. Right. So you're looking at different people and they know that you're in real estate. It's just so oversaturated right now to a certain extent. And Instagram has become, like, my shopping references are bad, but I was going to say, like, the Gucci of everybody wants to be there and it's whatever. But you have taken a whole other route and gone into the Twitter and gone all the way into Twitter. Not just. I mean, you're on there pumping stuff out on a regular basis, which I completely admire. So I want to know, first off, what made you make the switch, know, doing the Instagram stuff to going over to X or Twitter. I'm going to call it Twitter. We're just going to be with that, moving over to that, and then know, what is it about your target client, especially being in Fountain, that perpetuated that move a little?

00:20:15 - Danielle Fountain

So. So, first and foremost, I knew last year, I was like, gosh, social media is just not what it used to be. And I was like, I don't want to spend. And I was spending on a real. Just ridiculous amounts of time and worried about it, and they'd be posted the wrong time, and I might get engagement, but might be overseas, and they're never going to buy. Because one of the big things that happened on social media is that you cannot, especially with real estate. Now, I can't advertise. I've got, as far as I used to add, like, a demographic, an age, all that well because of fair housing, I can't.

00:20:44 - Mike Mills

Right.

00:20:44 - Danielle Fountain

And so I wanted a platform, and like you said, go where no one is. So Twitter had been sold. Now, X had been sold. Elon Musk had talked a lot about removing all the restrictions on the algorithms and essentially taking away as far as when people are getting promoted and different things like that. And so I was like, well, let me just go over there at first. And I was kind of a lurker like you. So you lurk on Isa, you look, and there's people that post all the time. There's people that comment, there's people that lurk, and there's people that do both. So you're kind of in between.

00:21:16 - Mike Mills

I don't like the word lurking if.

00:21:17 - Danielle Fountain

I'm okay, well, we say you're a. What is not a spectator.

00:21:23 - Mike Mills

I'm a spectator.

00:21:24 - Danielle Fountain

That's right. Spectator. No, lurkers are the weird people on Instagram. There's some lurkers there. But with that being said, I saw an opportunity that it's not crowded and people aren't scrolling and seeing now there are some agents out there, like, just sold all that. And so that was the thing when I went over there and I said, okay, they're not there. I was in the shadows, and I was kind of doing some investigative work, seeing it. And then what I started doing is I would find bigger platforms. That's really how you grow. And so you're going to see when you go on this, you're going to find me. You're like, oh, she's only got a little less than 600. And people are like, oh, that's not impressive. And it says that I've been it since, oh, gosh, 2017. 2019. I got it in call edge. Yeah, I didn't start posting until mid January, and so I grew. And if you talk about yo percentage wise, it's significantly larger. I grew from, like 30 people, and now I'm almost at 600 in less than three months. So as I get more profile people or people following me, I'll grow exponentially bigger. But I saw that no one was there. And then I saw I could go on the bigger, almost like the feeder fish, like the fish that go on the whale and they get their food off the whale.

00:22:34 - Mike Mills

That's how it works. That's exactly how it works. Yes.

00:22:37 - Danielle Fountain

I could go to these big platforms, and all of a sudden I could start commenting on big people's stories and engaging in a dialogue, and then people realize that. And when we start talking about my client and what I do, and a lot of it's data driven. That's kind of why I realized that I'm coming and I'm responding to people, not with emotion. I'm responding with data. And that's the problem in society right now. I think people hide all the data. And you're going to want a real estate agent, because the real estate agent, we're a non disclosure state in Texas, and they have the now, like, at the end of the day, if I can share as much data I can without giving away sales prices for specific homes, because I'm not allowed to do that nondisclosure. If I can start removing the curtain and letting people see the man behind the curtain, the wizard of Oz, I'm going to gain attention from that way. And so that's how I started. I started by going to bigger accounts and commenting on them, but bringing data not emotion. And whenever I brought data, other people engaged and started responding. And so I've always had this data in my head and now I'm putting it in a forum where people can see and people work with you, with people they know, like and trust. So if I can give you data that maybe makes you kind of get a feeling for me and you're kind of trusting what I'm saying, you'll follow me and then you'll start knowing me and then liking me, maybe you'll follow my Instagram and then you'll see who I am. I don't have a lot of video content right now, and this is where it's going to be kind of, I kind of have like different approaches as far as I wasn't going to start everything. I was going to get good at one thing on that platform. At first it was go to bigger accounts and comment, engage, involve, engage with meaningful either information or questions. When you pose a question to someone, like asking us, I don't know a lot about bitcoin, I went on some big platform and I said, hey, I know nothing about bitcoin. If I was to go and read an article or read a book, what would you recommend for a starter?

00:24:31 - Mike Mills

And then boom, 8 billion people jumped on.

00:24:35 - Danielle Fountain

Same with like commercial real estate. At the end of the day, residential. We shouldn't be crossing into commercial unless we have the knowledge and we have sponsors or different things like that because you don't want to get sued. But going in, I've started to follow some commercial agents and ask questions about what they do. But that's just from my own personal knowledge. That's not really for me trying to get engagement. But I noticed that when I did that, I got the engagement.

00:24:57 - Mike Mills

Even in that regard, sorry to cut you off there, but even in that regard, when you're doing commercial, right, if you're engaging with people that are involved in commercial real estate, well, they're probably not involved in residential real estate. And if you are creating relationships there, these are all areas and avenues for referrals because if you have a commercial person that ever comes along, you have some connections. But then if they're seeing you, knowing, liking and trusting you on that platform on a regular basis, if someone says, hey, I'm trying to buy a residential property, I don't need commercial, who do I call? They're like, hey, well, this chick knows everything, so give her a shout.

00:25:29 - Danielle Fountain

Yeah, well, and especially if you think of the commercial and you're kind of blowing my mind a little bit, commercial real estate is all about data. And so data negotiations, so the type of clients that they have that they're going to refer, they're going to want to make sure that who they're referring can kind of do something similar on the residential side on that, too.

00:25:48 - Mike Mills

And this is where I think I want you to talk to a little bit about. Because when people market choosing what platform or what style they do it in is always dependent on them. Right. Because everybody thinks, well, I see someone that's doing house tours on Instagram, I need to do that. Well, if you go do that and you absolutely hate it and it's not your personality, you're not going to do it well, you're going to do it, you're not going to like it, you're not going to do it consistently, you're not going to do it often, right. Well, your brain seems like such that, like you said, coming from the air force with the data and the negotiations and being involved in numbers and information on a regular basis, well, the best platform for that is mean. That's where you go. So your personality and your mode of communication seems to suit that platform the best. And therefore, I feel like you obviously have, but that's going to lead to the most success because it's something that you're built for.

00:26:42 - Danielle Fountain

Yeah, exactly. And so like you said, you hit what you're good at. So when I first got into real estate, I was doing home tours. Before home tours were a thing. So I was doing home tours about six years ago, I was going live and Facebook and all this. And every single time I would go in a house on a home tour, I did it a little different. I would talk data and so I would talk about, hey, we're going into this house. Here's the average price point in the neighborhood. Here's what's listed for. And so I brought that, but that stuff stopped performing and so I switched over. And exactly like you said, finding your niche market. What are your clients? Well, I want someone, especially in this. So going back to the Nar settlement, I want someone that's willing to pay my commission because they see the value that I bring versus just opening a door. And if I can bring the data, the numbers, we can do a little bit of forecasting. As far as, here's what's happening in the market, is it up or down or here's where people are making offers. Are we going 8%? Under is the lowest. It's gone. So we want to be at like a 6% or we want to go 10% and then negotiate up. And we know that we're going to settle around 6% underneath asking, we're going to do that and we're going to figure it out. And so I found when we talk about the niche, my niche is people that understand data and appreciate data. And I say, kind of take the emotion out of it a little bit, which is great, because when we get into the house, then we can bring all the emotions out and then we can still talk that about it with the wife or the husband.

00:28:02 - Mike Mills

You want to work with the people that you want to work with, right? That's the whole point of this. And this is a normal thing in the real estate world where everybody says, why, I service everybody. I can help anybody. Right? It's like, okay, well, when you're everything to everybody, you're nothing to nobody. That's usually what. And so drilling down and finding your area and finding your niche and knowing exactly who you want to target for you would seem very much like. I'm sure investors play a big role with you often because investors are often very data driven. This is just a general whatever, but more often than not, investors, real estate investors, are men. And it seems like there's, on Twitter, it seems a little bit heavier in the male department than the female department, but it's just even more of a be where others aren't. Because if you can communicate well and have a really good message on Twitter and you're a female, you're going to do very well as well. And so you can really stand out in that environment because it's a little bit unique, especially when it's kind of driven by a bunch of dudes on there just commenting on all kinds of stuff. And when you can set yourself in that market and say, hey, look, I know more than all of you do, and I'm going to show you why. It brings real value to what you can offer to people, and that's your clientele, and that's what you're looking for.

00:29:21 - Danielle Fountain

Yeah, well, and that's also the other clients. I get a lot of engineers in tech. They're not on Instagram. They're not wasting their time on Instagram and Facebook. The engineers in tech are the guys that has bitcoin. He's like, I got all this money. I can tell you. Bitcoin forward and backwards. I know I need to get a house. House. I trust you. I see all your data. Let's go find a house. Give me the numbers. I'm going to do a brief analyze, like analyze your numbers a little bit. But I know, and I've been following and I get the in depth part that you have. I don't want to have to babysit my agent. And those are who I'm targeting.

00:29:53 - Mike Mills

Yeah. It's not warm and fuzzies. You're not bringing them flowers. You're giving them facts and figures.

00:29:59 - Danielle Fountain

No, I'm not sending them, here's a pie because it's Thanksgiving.

00:30:07 - Mike Mills

Do that. There's nothing wrong with that.

00:30:08 - Danielle Fountain

No. And I mean, I actually still do that for certain people. I say certain people. There's people. That's clients, that's what their cookies on their birthday, different things like that. But the luckily thing. So this is the other, I say strength that I have. My wife is. She is like the design comedian as far as she's phenomenal. So I will go there and let's say I have the spouse number one. I'll just do it that way. Spouse number one loves data, and that's why I'm in the situation. Spouse number two is glazing over. The last thing they want to do is be there. I've got a color commentator, my wife, who is also very well versed in construction. We're there and we work as a team on all of our clients. And so it's really nice because they can see, like the spouse glides over and she comes in and she saves us.

00:30:53 - Mike Mills

Well, that's very normal in relationships with people is you usually have people that are opposites. Very rarely are people together for long periods of time that are the same people. That's a challenging thing. If you could pull it off, all power to you. But my wife and I are extremely different people. And I think in most relationships, the balance tends to make those things work in the long term because you bring stuff that the other person lacks and vice versa, especially when you guys are operating as a team, because you all are both real estate agents and you're approaching these clients and you have the data and the analytics that the analytical person wants, and then she's got the design and the color schemes and all the stuff that the other person that is looking wants. You're able to serve both clients in that respect, and that's good.

00:31:40 - Danielle Fountain

And that's it. And also, if you're an agent, I'm speaking the camera to all the agents that are watching. If you're an agent, and let's say you are one or the other, and you do occasionally, especially now, maybe your value is sometimes to pair up with another agent. Maybe that's going to happen to some people. Maybe that's what you need to do to feel comfortable. And you pair up with someone that's like yin and Yang. That might be, and you're in the same brokerage, it might be something that you both represent, because you both can. If you're in the same brokerage, you both can represent that client. Maybe that's what you got to do to, I say, to get over the hump. And you and your other agent, you partner together to help each other to get through this first couple of years, or just even in general, in a new agent, that might be something that you need.

00:32:18 - Mike Mills

Yeah, I'm just out of curious or curious about this because talk a lot about finding your client, right. Identifying who you're going to sell to. But I don't think many people actually sit down and think about it, like, okay, who do I really want to sell to sometimes? Most of the time, I think it just kind of happens because you just gravitate to a certain market with your military background and the planning that goes into place and all that kind of stuff. Did you actually sit down and come up with a plan, or are you, like, most. And it just kind of migrated that way, and you just went with it and then eventually kind of put your plan together. How did it work for you?

00:32:53 - Danielle Fountain

Okay, so at the beginning, it was live. Like, okay, so they'll put this. I moved to Fountain, the only person I knew, two people in all of Fountain, and I decided, hey, let's go into real estate. Oh, absolutely no network. Everyone's like, people are selling these houses, and because they know their family, friends, and all that. And so you had to differentiate. So at that point, it was, hey, what can I get? But so unintentionally, when I would go, my first client came from an open house. They don't even know that they were my first client. I'll probably tell them someday. Yeah. Before I went to an open house, I studied all this data and the individual that came in, and so I was talking about the neighborhood. What's the average days on the market? What is the appreciation from year over year? What was the appreciation from last month? Like, what are we looking? What are the trends? What's the inventory like? And they were like, oh, she's got her stuff together. And then I started to realize. So I did almost like, an after action report is something that people do or we call the Ooda loop. So it's for, essentially, you watch it. First you act, then you talk about what she did, and then you reassess where you're going. And so I learned really early on that the client that I was most successful with and that I had the least amount of stress with were those people that appreciated what I was bringing to the table. And if I have clients that I say not bring me less stress. But if you're in a better state of mind working with a client, more than likely you can take on more clients. If you have one client that drains you, more than likely. When that client, when you're done with that client for the day, you're grabbing a beer, grabbing a bottle of water or bottle of wine, not water, or you're going to the gym and you're just doing the last thing you want to do is real estate, and then you maybe start disliking real estate. So I would say if you're an agent out there, we talk about niches and neighborhoods and farming a neighborhood. Well, consider farming a type of human, and I don't mean it in, it's going to fair housing. It's nothing like that. But as far as what goal is that buyer going to bring or what goal is that seller, what type of seller do you like to work with? Do you like to work with new construction? Do you like to work with older homes and have people have flippers? And so you like to work with people where there's a lot of deals involved and you're going to do a mass production of that. So it's really finding out what at the end of the day, I encourage every single agent, this is an action item right now. Go and pull up your last 15 sales on the buy side and on the sale side and write about which agents that you enjoyed or which client you enjoyed working with most. And then look at those profiles and see is there a trend? And if there's a trend, maybe for this next year, especially when you're going to have to have these hard conversations. Why don't have your hard conversations with people that you like having conversations with?

00:35:33 - Mike Mills

Yeah, well, I think that because you're able to identify exactly who you want to work with and you've been able to kind of grow because again, we all have ideas of what we think we want, and then often those ideas and what we think we want don't end up being what it actually is. So there is a bit of trial and error that you're going to go through that's going to be able to sit down one day and just write it all out and have it figured out. It's going to be trial and error. But once you determine what that is, the power of identifying that and being able to drill all of your marketing efforts and put it into that, I think because some of the pushback that people get on doing any type of marketing or advertising, just the generic pushback, is, oh, well, someone's already doing that or so and so's, you know, I see those people doing this all the real. The truth is that, yes, there are people doing it, but there's not very many. And especially when you get into a specific area, when you go to, I I tell people, if you're not on YouTube at all, you absolutely need to be on there because the number one search engine on the planet is Google, okay? Number one. And the number two search engine on the planet is YouTube, and YouTube is owned by Google. So you're not putting stuff on there on a regular basis because that's where people go to find information. That's where they see something one place, and then they go search it somewhere else to get more data. And when you make video content or you make anything that is very specific to investors in Fountain who are looking for duplexes, here's what you're looking for. When you can get that specific on something, there is a person out there that is going to be looking for that. And when they look for that specific thing, they will find you. They won't find 100 other people. They're going to find you. And so the power of that is not fully understood except by the people that do it on a regular basis and understand it. And I know you were talking earlier about getting into video and you're working on that, but I'm a big, big believer in one step at a time, right? Eat the whale one bite at a time. You can't at once. So getting onto Twitter and doing what you've been doing, engaging with people so you can build a following, which we'll talk about here in a second, too. Now, you post regular market updates for the area and what you're putting out on the data that's happening in Fountain. That kind of stuff is what builds your audience. Then once your audience starts to build, then you can start branching out a little bit, because once you've got that process and system down into what you're doing, because that's what people miss sometimes, too, is posting is they're like, oh, I just go on a post. Yeah, but you got to be pretty deliberate about it because you got to have information, you got to have a plan on what you're going to do, because I'll just do it when I can. You'll never do.

00:38:05 - Danielle Fountain

Having a plan. And that's where I know I need to get, I say, into that YouTube space a little bit more, and that's where I'm getting the following. And I think there's, like, I'm reading some books that actually people gave me on YouTube. So I'm a nerd like that. As far as building your video content to put it out, like having ten videos, different things like that. So that when I do launch, it's like, I can start launching every day while I'm getting the back channel of the feed. But I think exactly what you said. Figure out one. Unlike what you're trying to do now, it's a little bit, I say a little bit different, but really get one niche and get one that you're getting that response and try it, and if it's not working, move on to something, but give it time, too, at the same time.

00:38:45 - Mike Mills

Yeah, well, even, like, for me, my niche isn't a particular platform. My niche is this is doing podcasts. I got into this because I knew I needed to be on social media. I knew I had to one way or another. I was a lurker, as you called it, that was actively engaged. I was like, well, how can I be on there but not doing it in a way that I don't enjoy, right. I listened to podcasts all the time. It was what I did. That's just when I was working out or when I was driving or when I was doing running, whatever, I would listen. That's what I did. So I was like, okay, well, I enjoy that. I obviously like talking because I talk a lot.

00:39:22 - Danielle Fountain

You got to get the gab.

00:39:23 - Mike Mills

Yeah. So it was like, all right, well, let me ask real estate professionals about what they do. Let me do a show about helping agents who are my target audience, obviously, on how to grow their business. And I can do it in a way that is what I'm comfortable with, what I'm good at, what I like to do. So I was consistent. I mean, that's why I've got 113 episodes, because I've been just doing it all the time. And then I figured out how to do it a little better and how to do it a little better. And then the platforms for me just became a place to put it right. Because even on my YouTube channel, I've got every podcast. I've got everything on there, but I've got, like, 1200 subscribers. My videos don't do great because I just put them there. They're just there.

00:40:01 - Danielle Fountain

They're there. Yeah.

00:40:02 - Mike Mills

I don't try to optimize them. I don't try to do much with it. Where I get my bigger draw or feedback is from the actual podcast platforms, from Spotify and Apple. I'm almost at 5000 downloads.

00:40:16 - Danielle Fountain

That's awesome doing it.

00:40:17 - Mike Mills

So that's where I've been building and that's where I put my focus on. I just use the other ones just because, again, got to exist in a few places sometimes. Kind of like you do with Instagram. Like you're there, but you're just not fully.

00:40:29 - Danielle Fountain

Yeah, well, yoga, you'll kill me when you know this. My handle always. The other thing is I always like to stay and this is maybe the data side to stay on top of when things happen. So I followed when YouTube was going to allow people to pick their own handles because for a long time you weren't allowed to. And I set the date in my calendar and I subscribed immediately. My YouTube handle is Fountain real estate. So I'm going to take it from here. I need to blow that up a little bit and like this, I enjoy talking just like you do. And so that has been the plan. But this is motivating me even more to say, okay, let's build that videos that I'm going to put because that is my plan. Build Twitter or build X with video, bring it over.

00:41:10 - Mike Mills

No, with X specifically because again, I'm probably on Twitter x whatever, ever more than I'm on any other platform. And I'm just looking for news all the time. It's what I do, but I just don't see, I mean, there's videos, but unfortunately the videos that I get on Twitter are the kids getting punched in the face. I don't know why I get those all the time. I guess because I watch them. But there's not a ton of video content. Typically there's a few people that I follow that will repost their interviews and stuff. And I guess I there, but it's mostly text articles that you go into to get to another place.

00:41:43 - Danielle Fountain

And so one thing that I've noticed and that it's going to be when my, I say videos do well because I've only had a few, but what I have to do is I have to record it, then I have to use a software like captions or something where it says what I'm saying because the majority. So if you ask people when they're looking at Twitter, they're probably at work.

00:42:00 - Mike Mills

Yes.

00:42:01 - Danielle Fountain

And they do not want the sound on. So if they're able to watch my video and read everything, that's benefit for them is that they can see. And it's also knowing the speed of the words popping up on page. If it's every single one, it's going to be harder where it's at, a paragraph that's going to be more beneficial. So that's also, once again, my data analytics. How is the return going to be better? It's not going to be good for the, I said in the words popping off, it's going to be like the paragraph format. It's going to be better for the people watching on that platform.

00:42:29 - Mike Mills

Well, and what I think that you've really done, and again, we've kind of said this already, but I just want to reiterate it to a certain extent, is you have taken your goal of reaching your client, but you have done it in a very process oriented, step by step method, not in a just scattershoot and throw it all out there because you understood that getting onto X or Twitter, it was first necessary. You had to build an audience. You have to build a following there for people that would be engaged with you. In order to do that, you needed to be able to go to the bigger platforms and engage there and ask questions and get involved. And then once you do that, you build your audience, then you start posting yourself about different things, getting people to there. And then once you get that, it's like you have a step and I don't think of many people.

00:43:13 - Danielle Fountain

Yeah. And so when we go real quick to kind of help people that are out there thinking about, okay, I want to use X now. We're not using it. So AI also get verified. I know people are like, oh, why do you get verified? Because at the end of the day, there's something about having that blue check mark next to my name that it's worth. It's pennies on the dollar as far as what. And that also gives you access to a lot more features that you can look at. So you can see like, oh, this post performed well in the engagement rate and different things like that. But what I did is if you're posting on other people's social media, so I was dropping data, what you have to have is for them to click on that link to your profile. They've got to see a reason to want to follow you back. You can't do just do a one. So I want to say is what I was doing at the beginning is I was doing at least like three posts a day. And real quick, for anyone that's listening, you can follow me at Danielle at the one realty is on Twitter. I'm sure he's going to ask that later on. He'll have the link.

00:44:06 - Mike Mills

I'll have it all in the show notes.

00:44:08 - Danielle Fountain

Awesome. But what I do is every single day I post the changes in the Fountain real estate market, specifically the city of Fountain. That was the other thing is that I can't, for data, talk broad because if you talk broad data, there's going to be holes in it. So I talk specifically single family houses in Fountain, Texas. I post every single day. I post a 24 hours update, what happened the past 24 hours and then I post a seven day update and that's just going to be numbers. The other thing I, it originally was, originally I was just kind of throwing the data out there and talking about it, but then I made it to where if you click on it, you see the one realty every single time you see that. So I made it more professional because you want people to think I say more professional. It's really easy, canva, every single day. Really easy. But on top of that, I've got to give them a reason to read my post. So they can't just be a picture that you post. I also have to have some explanation, either explanation or details they can't find in that picture because you want it to be sticky. You want people to sit there on Twitter because it's a sticky note. Even though it used to be some really small amount of characters, now the algorithm rewards you. And this goes back to understanding how advertisers so I can't get the advertising money yet. I don't know if that's happening anytime soon. Honestly, I would rather get clients than advertising money, but it's this stickiness. So Twitter is going to reward you for people reading your post, and the longer they stay on the post, the better. But then also reading and engaging in comments, because in the comments section is actually where advertisers put their advertisements. So you'll see the random ads that come through the scroll feed. But then also when you start looking at the comments, that's actually where Twitter can get or x can get a lot more money from you. Bang. For their buck is if they can start putting advertisers in your comments. So you want to have a post that engage. That's why a lot of times people end with like a question or what do you feel? And there's probably people out here that do this and it really bothers me sometimes when I see people post a picture and they get amazing. But they can do this now because they built their audience. They'll post a picture and then they'll say something like, what's happening in this picture? That's unusual.

00:46:12 - Mike Mills

Yeah. It's all those little tricks that everybody.

00:46:14 - Danielle Fountain

You. And you'll learn them, and that is good. But what I would say is, you don't.

00:46:19 - Mike Mills

I know that they're doing. I still get sucked into. I'm like, what is it? I don't understand.

00:46:22 - Danielle Fountain

I did it today. There was a tree that was acting. I don't know if you've seen this one. It was some old house from the 90. It was appraiser, and there was a tree that was used as a support in the basement, like an actual tree that they built the house on, and they used it as one of the pillars. But it stuck me in. But with that being said, I say, be very careful. You can do that. But if you do it too much, people are going to unfollow you, unsubscribe. So you have to still give them value.

00:46:47 - Mike Mills

One of my sprinkle in the tricks every once in a while.

00:46:50 - Danielle Fountain

Okay. When Gronk first came out, I asked him, I said, tell me a real estate joke. And this was early on the platform, and I posted it, and I got great engagement because Gronk was a thing. The other thing I've noticed is if you go over to trending, and trending for you, if you can somehow tie in one of those words that works wonders was Texas Roadhouse was trending one day. And so I put in something about being hungry and wishing I had Texas roadhouse rolls with honey butter. And it got engagements because people are tracking that. So it's occasionally using what they're openly telling you. This is the teacher giving you the answers to the test. If you go to what's trending, they're going to tell you, hey, here's what's trending. Use one post a day and put one of those trending words in.

00:47:37 - Mike Mills

Well, there's a good story about, um, do you know who Brett Weinstein is? He's on there quite a. He's. I listen to Joe Rogan a lot. He goes on to that show and talks about. But he was talking about prior to Elon owning the platform when all the vaccine stuff was coming out, and he had some statements about it or whatever kind of being pushed. His, some of his information wasn't popping up. But then all of a sudden, out of nowhere. It just started trending. And he was like, I don't understand what happened. Well, because his first name was Bret, there had been something that had happened with Bret Favre that was involved in the media at that point. And because he had the same first name, he was trending underneath the Bret Favre topic. Or mean, there were people that were genuinely interested in what he was saying, but it was kind of being suppressed a little bit by Twitter at the. So. So he was trending just because his first name was the same, because of the trending topic working in his favor.

00:48:39 - Danielle Fountain

Yeah, I did last week. I threw south by. Just because it's south by Southwest doesn't mean because south by Southwest was trending in Fountain.

00:48:48 - Mike Mills

That's how you play the game. I mean, that's just how it look. It's funny when people, you're like, oh, that's your kind of, I mean, go watch madman. I mean, the entire point of advertising, marketing, or anything that you're trying to do is find the avenue to get seen. That's the whole point. So you have to learn these little tricks. And part of what you're saying is that because you're so engaged in one platform, because you're on Twitter and that's what you do, these are the things that you pick up because you're not trying to be Instagram and Facebook and everything else. I am x Twitter. This is what I'm doing. This is what I'm building. At least until I've got this process and system nailed down and then I'll move on to the next thing.

00:49:25 - Danielle Fountain

Yeah, and that's the thing is I have to pour my time in because I've got to get my engagement rates up. I've got to get people responding. I've got to have that. And so if I put the time that I would put, and that's why my Instagram has been nonexistent. And I used to post prior, when I first was scrolling my Instagram, it was kind of like Twitter. It was every day. It was responses. And I've just said, hey, this is where I'm going to focus and I'm going to put my time because no one's here. If you look up Fountain, Texas, for the handle, more than likely by the time you scroll within ten posts, I'm in there. It's my daily stats that show up. And granted, it might show my views might only be 150 on the post, but I'm showing up.

00:50:03 - Mike Mills

Yes, but it's all time. This is the other thing. Whenever I talk to realtors and they're like, well, so and so has got 200,000 subscribers and they've got 100. They're all like, I can't get there. I posted the videos. I don't have anybody watching. I'm like, you don't go back and look at that person. They've been doing it for five years. They didn't just start six months ago. This isn't something that you just start doing it. And everybody's got this idea of virality in their head that you're just going to go viral. That's not how it works. You have to build something, get a base audience. There are occasions where things will go viral, where you will have something that explodes, but until you've built some sort of a foundation or have some sort of no like and trust factor with your audience, then you're never going to hit that virality part anyway. So just keep posting and stay consistent.

00:50:52 - Danielle Fountain

And honestly, having 2000 followers is garbage if you don't interact with them. So I have less than 600. And I can tell you on that platform alone from when I started in January, I already have four people that I'm engaging already in real estate conversations that are like, when I say engaging, as far as we already have searches set up, I've got people that I'm talking to on there about real estate on the off side, so it's engaging. So if someone is liking your post, message them all four and say, hey, you like my post? Think I've noticed you've been liking it. I appreciate you. Or someone follows I and someone did this to me and that's why I started doing it is I followed someone and they responded back and said, thanks so much for following. I grew up and went to UT, or I see you're in Fountain, you went to UT. And I realized it's all about human connection, especially as AI starts to take off because people can tell and as much as agents. So yeah, you're going to get all these leads, but is it going to be wasted time? Especially when you're going to have to start explaining yourself and having, so let's go full circle. You're going to have to have buyer's rep agreements before you show a house and you're going to have to all these. So at the end of the day, it's way better to have someone that's significantly more invested in you than that off person that saw you show a house and you did a home tour. That was really pretty. At the end of the really, you got to engage with that people so they get to know you even if you're on Facebook, if you're on Instagram anytime. So tip with Instagram is that if you message on their stories or rather than liking the post, it's better to write a comment rather than write a comment, it's better to respond to it by sending it to that person's DMs and ask a question about it. Because when they start engaging you in their DMs, all of a sudden you're going to show up higher on their Instagram platform. So for like story time. So if I'm commenting on someone's post on Instagram and I slide into their DMs and we have a conversation, Instagram goes, oh, they like each other, I'm going to show them on the story. And I think Twitter does the same thing because I see a lot of people that maybe I don't necessarily follow and I don't even realize I don't follow them just because they're constantly on there, because I'm engaging them.

00:52:56 - Mike Mills

Yeah, well, I mean, that's the whole point of all this too, again, is if you can post a video on Instagram and you can have 5000 people see it, but did anybody call you? Did anybody reach out to you? Did anybody say, I want to go see a home? And if not, and if you've got 20 videos that have got 5000 views each and you haven't spoken to a single human because of it, is it accomplishing the goal versus making one post on Twitter or making even just a post on Instagram or anything else and somebody engages with that? It maybe only got to ten people, but one person, for whatever reason, decided to engage with you, which one is more impactful? And I would argue on the engagement is way more impactful.

00:53:38 - Danielle Fountain

And I think that's also one of the benefits. If you're thinking about exploring Twitter, I say encourage you to just go on and I say be a lurker, but be on there for a little bit and see. Because I think that the quality of conversation on Twitter is way, I think it's significantly better than any other platform.

00:53:53 - Mike Mills

Because you can actually what part of Twitter you're on.

00:53:55 - Danielle Fountain

But here's the other thing, and this is from when I was in theater when I was younger and I did improv. And one of the things they always taught you is a statement called yes. And so someone, for instance, yesterday I posted some data and I did a quick like, hey, Fountain was at 65% from when we were at the lowest in March to where we were at the highest peak in May of 2022. We appreciate 65%. We lost 21% this year. And then, so we're at about, I say about 40, some OD percent. Someone said, you can't do math that way. It doesn't work. And I said no. And then I had to go through. But rather than saying no, I said, I appreciate you giving me the opportunity. I understand. I didn't explain it well. And then I broke down the numbers of what percentages I was looking at, and they responded, and it was positive. And so you will get haters on there all the time. You can diffuse them if you say, oh, okay, I see this. I see where you're coming. Okay. The hardest thing I say about Twitter is you have to put down your shield and you've got to put down your weapon. It's getting like that. You can say controversial things, but you'll win people over by being respectful of their opinion and saying, okay, I see how you can see this. I appreciate that's how you view. I may view it a little bit different, but you've given me another look at why you feel so passionately about something. And I have people that I engage offline comments that we have completely different views. So you can imagine being a gay female on Twitter, and if you're like, oh, it's certain people in there. But then when they start engage me and we start getting past, like, we're humans, but then the misconceptions that they might have about me, whether because I was in the military or because I'm gay or because of my religion, it changes stuff. And so I think it's really cool because you're getting back to that human connection. And if you can use it for good, it's amazing.

00:55:50 - Mike Mills

Well, the other thing is, you have to remember, too, that there are people out there whose entire goal in life is to troll you. And surprisingly enough, you'd be amazed sometimes that some of them are like 16 year old kids. So be careful when you engage with someone who is trying to draw you out and get you fired up about something, because odds are they're probably just messing with you. And if you let them, then they win. So kill them with kindness. Right. And don't engage with that guy.

00:56:18 - Danielle Fountain

Well, and the other thing, too, one of my early on posts that I say that went viral, but it kind of did. I had, like, I want to say it was like 50 something thousand people saw it. It was something towards the vaccine and stuff like that. And we can go down that you could probably find if you go back and look at my Twitter x, but at the same time, sometimes it's good to post something controversial and let it start discussion. That's how I've seen we talk about the tree in the basement. So people post that, like, what do you think? And then some people, they just throw it out there and people just wait and they might not believe. And I know I follow some of them. They don't believe anything of what they're saying. And they'll say it later on in the comments. They'll say, I just want to hear everyone's perspective because people say the way they word their question is to the negative of something, when in actuality they don't believe it. So it's really cool when you start watching some of the bigger accounts have grown and you can find them how they engaged. If you go back in their history, you lurk back into their history.

00:57:15 - Mike Mills

I want to be respectful of your time because I told you this would be an hour. So there's two things I want to do. So one of them want to put to the end, which is I want you to give us your update for Fountain because I want to know where everything's happening down there. And that might take a second, but since we're talking about driving traffic and controversial stuff and all that kind of fun stuff, I want to ask you a, um, because I'm a dork on this kind of, um. So you were in the military and I'm a. So one of the things that I think is hilarious right now is we see all this. We could fall down a rabit hole forever on this, but we see all these, see, you know, the army with these different cameras and radar and all this kind of stuff, and they're like, we don't know what it is. Nobody from the air force is saying a word. Nobody in the air force says anything about anything. Which of all the ones that would see anything or be engaged with it on a regular basis would be the air force? So I find that incredibly suspicious, number one. And whether aliens or ultra terrestrials or interdimensional beings or us messing with everybody because we got this technology that we're not showing. So, former air force member, what is your take on all that?

00:58:34 - Danielle Fountain

If I tell you, I'd have to kill you.

00:58:35 - Mike Mills

Yeah.

00:58:37 - Danielle Fountain

No. I have three pilots in my family I've gone and seen. There's different briefings and stuff like that. And I'm just going to say that there's nothing as out of the realm of possibility these days.

00:58:52 - Mike Mills

There's things you just see and you don't know and you have no idea what it is. And the general theme in the military is, when it comes to stuff like that, is, you know what? I'm just going to just play the.

00:59:03 - Danielle Fountain

Fifth, but I guess you're not getting in trouble.

00:59:05 - Mike Mills

But, yeah, these days it's a little more. But it's definitely a crazy topic. So, anyway, but in my head, she's in the Air force and she's on Twitter and that stuff's on there all.

00:59:15 - Danielle Fountain

Oh, I love it. I can tell you. I remember being in a briefing and someone slipped up about something, and I was like, they just confirmed. And they knew that they had slipped up, but it was a classified briefing anyways. But the level of what they said in that classified briefing was way out of any of our clearance level.

00:59:33 - Mike Mills

Clearance levels, yes.

00:59:34 - Danielle Fountain

Should not have been said. They knew it, and you saw it on their face and they kept going on.

00:59:39 - Mike Mills

Just kind of skated right over it. Well, it's one other thing, obviously, I talk to borrowers every day, ask them about their jobs and what they're doing. And Texas, we have, Lockheed Martin is a big defense contractor here in the state. And so I had a lady that was moving here from. I think she was coming from California and she was moving to Texas, and she was being transferred by Lockheed. And we were talking about her employment and what she was doing, and she was like, an aerospace engineer, and she'd been there for, like, 20 years and blah, blah, blah, and she was just getting relocated. She's like, I'm not real fired up about it, but whatever, this is what I got to do. And I was like, what are they moving here to? Come check out the UFOs that you guys have been trying to back engineer? And I said that to her, I was just joking because we'd kind of established that and we had been joking the whole time and say that. And then she's like, yeah, they're just relocating me because I have some stuff I have to work on. So anyway, I was there for two years. She just, like, moved, right? Okay. I didn't push anymore. But anyway. All right, so enough about UFOs. That's my own little fun little topic that I dive into. So let's talk about Fountain. So the market down there has been. It was one of the hottest, and it was maybe the hottest market in the country just 18 months ago. And now there's this misunderstanding that, oh, well, the markets crashed. Okay, well, there's a difference between crashing and resetting. Back to where correction should be. Yes. So how is Fountain doing these days and where are we headed with that market?

01:01:06 - Danielle Fountain

Yeah. So looking at over, say, the first year and a half, knowing where we were, we went up 65%. I told you this earlier, and then we went down 20% from May of 22 to the end of kind of last year. End of last year, where we're already seeing today, we have already seen the average price point in the sales go back and why that's important. So one of the things I track almost every day is what is the close price to list price and what is the close price to original list price? The higher we get to 100%, that means more houses are closing at asking from a lender perspective, that means that they're going to appraise. Right. Because you're going to get, as you get more houses that are closing out, versus the opposite, which we were seeing in end of 2022 23, we were seeing closer to like a 92%. So the closer you go down in that, that means prices are going to go down. So that's one of my, I say, leading indicators. So what we're seeing right now is that we're seeing a significant number of houses that are closing closer to almost. The average home is at like 99%. The median is like a 98% of what we're seeing for single family homes in Fountain. That's the other thing is I dive into specific areas, so if I have someone that's out in Westlake, we'll dive into that. But if I'm on my platform, I talk specifically Fountain. With that being said, that means that we're seeing, okay, prices are getting up, there's a little bit more demand. We're also seeing, like this past week, it was like 22% of the homes, it was on Monday that closed out. So there was 40 homes that closed out. Nine of them closed out for over asking. So that was 22% of the homes closed out for over asking. What does that do? Well, essentially that means that it's going to start. Our comparable homes are going to go up. How does that help a buyer? Because buyers like, oh, price are going to go up. That helps you because we're going to get more inventory as sellers feel comfortable that the prices are coming back and they don't have to wait for six months to sell their house, they're going to bring their house back on. So that's a good thing. And, well, as they want to beat the rush later on to go buy, so if they bring their house early on, they accept it what it is as far as what they sell for, and then they can go buy another property. That's really good. So we're seeing days on market good. So my leading indicators are, are days on market going down? Yes. Are we going to closing out closer to list price? Yes. Both of those are happening. As we weed out the other inventory. The only thing that I would say is the rate at which we're listing homes. And this is a thing to keep in mind. We're listing homes at a rate that we're getting closer to 2019, but we're still not there because we have a lot of aged inventory that's sitting a little bit longer. So where my fear. So if you were to ask, like, Danielle, what's your biggest fear? My biggest fear is inventory in Fountain coming up, because we had so much inventory last year, but it wasn't new inventory, it was aged inventory. So our actual new listings data was significantly down last year in 2023, even though you saw we've got so much inventory. No, it was just old age inventory. Had we sold at the absorption rate we did pre COVID, it wouldn't have been there. So we're going to have people that aren't going to be selling their house, number one, because they can't afford with the new interest rates, you're going to have, number two, people that. So they're staying in their house. I say staying in their house. The unintentional investor. So it's someone that bought their house, has a killer mortgage rate, and because the appreciation in the neighborhood, they can cash flow it by renting. So they're going to rent that sucker out, and then they're going to go buy another house. So rather than having to sell one, buy one. It's rent one, buy one that's one less out of the inventory. And then finally, in the city of Fountain, we don't have big lots of land development. And that home initiative is something else going in Fountain. But essentially, in order to get a new house, you have to tear down an existing and build up one. Well, lenders, I mean, lenders, builders and developers. Last year, their ability to get cash was not there right now. Yeah. So we're going to see a lag coming up, probably really at the end of 24, but 25, because that's as far as time to get the money, get the plans, build the house. We're going to see a lag in probably our new inventory coming onto market, which is also an opportunity if you're a developer and there's ways that you can get it. I see developer or maybe an investor that you can tear down the house and you can build up a new one. That's going to be something that there's going to be a demand for. I'd say if you're in 2025 and you're having new homes come on the market, there's not as many of them right now. And once that inventory that is there goes away, it's going to be beneficial to you there.

01:05:26 - Mike Mills

Yeah, it's an unfortunate thing that's going to continue on. And I don't know what the light at the end of the tunnel is on the inventory issue, because I think it's going to perpetuate and continue because builders, it's expensive to build. They're getting better premium for build to rent properties than they are for build to buy, which is unfortunate, but that's what's happening as well. In certain parts of the state, the more people that hold onto their properties and continue to rent them out, the less inventory is going to be available that's going to turn over. And that's why anybody that ever asks me, when should I buy, I'm always like, yesterday. Because it just is a situation where we say this, because it's hard as us being in real estate, because, oh, yeah, I want to do a loan and you want to sell a house and, oh, yeah, of course you're going to say that. But it's just true. I mean, it's just true. It does not go down. When you look at it on a long enough time horizon, it does not decrease, and it's not going to, because the only thing that's going to cause that is massive inventory or massive job loss. And either one of those necessarily are in the future.

01:06:29 - Danielle Fountain

Well, and then we talk about job loss. So, yes, we have a tech space. But what I always tell you, one of the good things about buying in Fountain is we have a couple of different things. I would say government say we've got the army's futures command, we've got the cap it all out there. IRS is great because they are always getting paid. Even during times of recessions, they're getting paid.

01:06:46 - Mike Mills

You work for the government, you get a paycheck.

01:06:48 - Danielle Fountain

No matter what, you get a paycheck. I was in the military and I can attest to that then having education. And so we've got universities here because you get an influx every single year of new people, not only students, but also what that does is it brings all of the businesses that support the universities and as well as the teachers and facility and staff and then finally having hospital medical systems. So we're getting MD Anderson is building out here in Fountain. A lot of people don't realize that that's happening. It's a $2 billion project downtown where the old Frank Irwin center used to be. And so when you get medical, there's a level of, I say, fiscal growth that's going to come into the city because of the professions that are going to be there, the money that's going to be spent on the hospital, the infrastructure, different things like that. And so that's why Fountain, I say, is a better, more secure place to buy a home than maybe up in. I know Taylor is like, you've got the Samsung facility coming up there, but doesn't necessarily mean that people are going to live there. They might live in Fountain, things like that. And then finally, is real estate is a finite resource.

01:07:49 - Mike Mills

Yes.

01:07:49 - Danielle Fountain

You can't make more real mean as far as land.

01:07:53 - Mike Mills

Yep. By real estate, they're not making it anymore. So that's how it. Well, Daniellele, I really, really appreciate you coming on. I know we went a little long, so I apologize for that. But this was great. And I think it's a real benefit to anybody listening to understand there is a way through all this and there's a way to navigate all this. And the reality is you're going to have to work. Unfortunately, for a lot of people in our profession, working for the last couple of years was not a big requirement because the phone just rang because the market dictated that. But nowadays, that's just not the case. And those that work and can find their way and plan and execute that plan and then do the. What's the evaluation after the.

01:08:34 - Danielle Fountain

Yeah, observe the orient. Then you're going to decide you're going to change your action, but you've got to be able to do an after action report every single time. That's it where I'm going to go.

01:08:43 - Mike Mills

Right. If you can do your after action report, then you will be able to succeed in this. And that's what I want people to take away from this, is that changes are coming. But I will say this for the rest of this year. In every change, there is always opportunity, and you just have to find where your opportunity is and take advantage of it. So, Daniellele, I really appreciate you coming on. Is there anything you want to leave us with before we take off?

01:09:05 - Danielle Fountain

Gosh, I'd say at the end of the day is know who you are, because who you are is eventually is what's going to attract people to you. Don't try to be someone else because at the end of the day, you can only fake it for so long.

01:09:16 - Mike Mills

That's right. Well, thank you for everybody that stuck around. We appreciate it. And we will be back next week. I'll have my market update on Tuesday. And we will talk a little bit more about some of the commission lawsuits and what's going on with that. It's going to be a big topic conversation for the rest of this year, but I'll also keep bringing you ways to navigate through it. So tune in, check it out. And thank you, Dan. Follow Daniellele on Twitter because she's amazing. Reach out to her. She'll engage with, you know, continue the conversation. So thank you, everybody. Everybody, have a great weekend and we will see you again soon.

01:09:44 - Danielle Fountain

Okay? Thanks, Mike.

01:09:46 - Mike Mills

All right.